Tell No Lies Read online

  “Well, when I was sick, you said you wanted to do stuff that matters.”

  He set his napkin on his plate. “Private practice matters.”

  “Of course it does,” she said. “But does it matter to you?”

  “It’s not like I’m becoming a baby-seal clubber.”

  “True,” she said. “And I’ve heard that positions in the seal-clubbing industry are highly competitive. But you’re not answering the question, mi vida.”

  Two busboys swept in like piranhas, picking the table clean.

  When the busboys left, Cristina took his hand. “Let me make something clear. I don’t care if you’re a private shrink or a portfolio manager or a doula, as long as you wake up every morning feeling alive.”

  “Doula?”

  “Okay, maybe that’d be a little unsettling. But you have a—and I know the term is overused—a gift for doing what you do. And part of that has to do with the people you work with. Do you think it’ll be the same if you’re dealing with the kind of folks who can afford private practice?”

  “Maybe I’ll make more headway with them.” Wielding a chopstick, he poked at a few stray pieces of rice on his plate. “I’ve been doing this for … what? Three years? And sometimes I don’t know how effective I am. The recidivism rate sucks. Maybe Dooley’s right. Maybe some people you can’t get through to.”

  “Some people you can’t,” Cris said. “How ’bout the others?”

  “They make gains in session, and then one thing sets them off six months, a year later, and they’re right back where they started.” He rubbed at a stain in the tablecloth. “I’d be lying to say there aren’t days where I wonder what the hell I’m doing.”

  She watched him for a while, then said, “You didn’t used to.”

  “Maybe the shine’s worn off. When I first started running groups, it was so exciting. The adrenaline. But then it turned into … real life.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Real life’s hard and unglamorous and a lotta work. It’s about hanging in and fighting the right fights and taking two steps forward and sometimes three steps back. But maybe some fights are worth fighting even if you’re not gonna win them. Because that one time you make a difference, however small…”

  When he looked up, something at the periphery of his vision, beyond her face, caught his attention. His focus sharpened. Past the length of the restaurant, through the pinned-back kitchen door, in a stairwell leading down into blackness, an oval seemed to float a few feet above the floor.

  A shadowed face?

  Disembodied.

  As if someone were standing several stairs down, head almost level with the floor. Any trace of neck or torso blended into the gloom.

  In the kitchen, steam hissed from a fryer, obscuring Daniel’s view. He’d gone rigid in his chair. Vaguely, he sensed Cris’s hand on his arm, her concerned bearing, the movements of her mouth.

  As the mist cleared, a burst of flame erupted from a pan, throwing a flicker of light into the dark of the stairwell.

  Enough for Daniel to discern part of the black sweatshirt that had turned the body invisible. And suspended above, the familiar neoprene mask wrapping the head, smoothing it to menacing perfection.

  Chapter 39

  The featureless head peered, it seemed, directly back at Daniel from across the restaurant. Like a fencing mask—all focus and yet utterly empty.

  A chef crossed between stoves, his legs momentarily blocking Daniel’s view, and when he’d passed, the stairwell was empty.

  Daniel’s thighs banged the table as he leapt up, making the dishes jump. He shouted back at Cris—“He’s here! Call Dooley!”—and then he was hurtling toward the kitchen. A waiter wheeled out of the way, miraculously keeping a tray of beer bottles aloft. Daniel barreled through the kitchen, dodging elbows and complaints, and into the dark stairs.

  There had to be another exit down there. If he could just follow, see where the killer was headed.

  Ten or so crumbling concrete steps dropped into a disused room split by support beams. Reaching the bottom, Daniel slapped at a light switch to no avail, the crunch of glass beneath his shoes indicating that the bulb had been strategically broken.

  With a quick sweep, he took in the space. Storage boxes, cobwebs, an industrial freezer laboring audibly in the near corner. Stagnant air, earthy and damp. Way on the other side, a sheet of light fell through a barely open door and stretched across the dusty floor, carrying with it the changing colors of the street above—bobbing red lanterns, oscillating neon.

  He kept one foot on the bottom step, ensuring a clear retreat route in case of attack. Jerking in a few breaths, he tried to adjust to the shifting glow, the patterns mapping across the ceiling, the stairs, his own face. Not only was it disorienting, but it acted as camouflage, blurring the surfaces, melding box with beam, beam with wall. Everything seemingly inanimate and yet alive with movement. He figured that the man had fled through the door opposite.

  Angry Cantonese echoed down at him from the kitchen. The seconds were ticking away; he had to keep on or fall back and explain. Pursuing was foolish for more reasons than he could recount. And yet would he have another chance to get this close?

  The image of Molly Clarke came to him. Her scared perch on the couch in her little place where she tended her illness and her cats, making do as best she could. A bit more than twenty-four hours to her deadline.

  He broke the stillness, running for that far door.

  He’d taken no more than two steps when a chunk of the nearest beam detached itself, resolving into human form. The shadowed figure accelerated at him, one arm drawn back for a blow. Daniel turned reflexively away, but the collision of fist to cheek, even glancing, left his ears ringing and deposited him in a sprawl on the moist floor. The black form was on him, a drawn-back glove flashing through the sheet of light and giving off a metallic glint.

  Daniel brought up both hands and caught the man’s wrists, stopping the tip of the military knife inches from his nose. They struggled, belly to belly, the man’s mass pinning Daniel, grinding his shoulder blades painfully into the concrete. The mask drew closer, the man gathering all his weight behind the knife, and through the circle of breathing perforations sighed sickly-sharp breath—tobacco and mint?

  Daniel grunted and fought, heels scrabbling for purchase, but the man’s strength was overpowering. Though the mask loomed less than a foot from Daniel’s face, the figure-eight slit of the eyehole was too narrow and the storage room too dim for him to catch a glimpse of skin, whether brown or white. He could make out only the gleam of pupils and the point of the knife, inches from his cheek, blurring in and out of focus. His attacker bore down. Daniel’s strength was waning. Even through the panic, he registered a single thought as he watched the steel tip lower inch by inch toward his straining eye: The Tearmaker.

  A recollection washed over him—that feeling of being laid out beneath an opponent on the high-school mat, the bleachers whirling into upside-down view, the referee there on his stomach peering in, counting, hand poised to announce the pin. Reaching back twenty-five years, he found the instincts there and waiting, all that muscle memory, all those wrestlers’ dirty tricks.

  Bracing the man’s wrist with the bar of his forearm, Daniel wormed his other hand free and made a fist, resting his thumb above his curled index finger so the tip protruded—a striking weapon. He fought his hand along the front of the face, his knuckles dragging across the mask, and jabbed the thumb into the pressure point at the jawbone, an inch down from where the earlobe bulged the neoprene.

  A pained grunt, a waft of stale, minty breath across Daniel’s face, and the man’s grip faltered. Daniel drove his knee up between the guy’s legs, making brutal contact, and the man twisted, the knife skittering away. Gloved hands grabbed Daniel’s biceps, slamming him flat on the floor again, and Daniel hit a bridge, arching his back, rolling onto the top of his head to create space. He bucked and flipped, landing on his stomach, waiting for the boun
ce of the man against his back. Impact. The man reared slightly to adjust, and Daniel pivoted hard from his midsection, leading with his elbow, connecting at the man’s temple.

  The blow knocked the guy clear off him. The black form rolled once, steamrollering a cardboard storage box, the momentum carrying him seamlessly up onto his boots about ten feet away near that barely ajar rear door. They locked eyes across the span of concrete for an instant as the man seemed to decide whether to fight or flee. Then he swiped the knife from the floor and barged through the door, letting in a flood of light and street noise.

  Daniel pulled himself up and stumbled in pursuit, bounding up a short set of metal stairs to come level with the street. The man was not in view, but through strobing traffic Daniel saw an overturned sale table and a woman sagging against a store window, clutching her chest—the aftermath of a commotion.

  He took a jogging step off the curb, but a blaring horn sent him leaping back. A bus hissed by on an effluvium of exhaust, the bumper whispering against his sleeve. Another inch and it would have taken off his arm. Startled faces filled the windows—the “Dirty 30” Stockton, crammed to the gills, as always.

  Daniel took a Frogger route through traffic, tracking the man’s wake. Here a knocked-over trash bin, there a tourist picking himself up off the pavement. Daniel hurdled a fallen sidewalk sign, shouldered through a huddle of shoppers, staring up the sidewalk. Nothing. Frustrated, he spun, scanning the busy street for any sign of the masked man. Through a storefront window, a deadpan butcher hacked robotically at raw chicken parts. Turtles rasped in glass cases. Fish stench rode a current of air from a market.

  A crash announced a collision around the corner, and he bolted back into motion. Too late, he spotted the heap of spilled silk dresses and skidded out on them, all traction lost. He pulled himself up, yanking free from a cluster of concerned and angry onlookers, coming face-to-face with a familiar vendor wielding familiar fluorescent yellow flyers—“Dim sum half off! Dim sum half off!” Shaking her off, he saw a black form vanish through a beaded curtain up ahead. It took him a few steps to get back to full speed, and then he blasted through the storefront filled with cardboard bins bearing picket sale signs—3 SHIRT $9.99!—and out the back, spilling into an alley just in time to see the dark figure careen onto the street up ahead and dash out of view.

  Daniel sprinted after him, his chest burning. With the police en route and multiple witnesses, the advantage was Daniel’s; he just had to stay close enough to jar loose a clue, to spot a getaway car or motorcycle. Veering hard out of the alley, he nearly knocked over a trio of would-be diners. No sign of his attacker. Daniel ran the length of a block, then another, strings of red and yellow plastic pennants passing overhead, endless finish lines. Through a gap in the rooftops, he could see the jagged skyline of the financial district a few blocks over. Beyond his future office building, Castanis’s corporate goddesses materialized from the black sky, crowning the high-rise. Fog-misted and backlit, dominating the city, they seemed to peer down onto Daniel with faceless focus. Their attention made him and his ragged pursuit seem small and unimportant, an ant before gods.

  He did not slow.

  His legs carried him back into Portsmouth Square. The moon hung bone white and alert in a net of clouds. Ahead, an elevated bridge led to the tower of the Hilton and the Chinese Cultural Center, providing a vantage onto the whole park. He ran across to the midway point and leapt up onto the wide concrete-block railing, startling a young couple making out on one of the benches. He teetered a moment on the treacherous edge, the twenty-foot drop making itself suddenly known, but regained his balance and looked around. No sign of the man.

  Hopping down, he ran across the narrow breadth of the bridge, jumping onto the opposite railing. He saw the black form, too late, on one of the zigzag walkways in the plaza far below. The man paused, the mask staring back. A frozen moment as they regarded each other across the park’s expanse. Then the figure turned, bounding over a metal rail and vanishing into the night.

  Chapter 40

  Giving a police statement took longer than reading a Russian novel. Daniel and Cristina had been separated the first go-round to ensure they didn’t purposely or inadvertently affect the other’s version of the evening’s events. Now they occupied side-by-side chairs in Dooley’s box of an office in the heart of 850 Bryant. Cris looked uncharacteristically pale. With his fight-rumpled clothes and adrenaline hangover, Daniel imagined he looked exponentially worse. Key shock points of the night refused to clear from his mind: the first glimpse of that mask through the kitchen steam, the form melting from the storage room’s beam, a knife tip inches from piercing his pupil. They reemerged at random, like jolts of electricity.

  Cris gripped his hand, tight. He realized his knee was jacking up and down and made an effort to still it.

  Dooley asked, “You sure you don’t want us to have someone check you for injuries?”

  “I’m okay, thanks. Mostly okay.” Stifling a groan, he rubbed his nape. “It used to be I could hit a bridge without pulling every goddamn muscle in my neck.”

  “You were less than half your age,” Cris said, “and no one was trying to kill you.”

  “Was he spying on you or trying to kill you?” O’Malley asked from his lean in the doorway.

  Daniel said, “Judging by the knife he tried to jam through my eye, I think it’s safe to say he was trying to kill me.”

  “But maybe that was in self-defense.” Dooley caught herself. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. If I hadn’t gone after him, maybe he wouldn’t have attacked me.”

  “You never got a death threat,” O’Malley said. “It’s a break in the pattern. Molly Clarke is supposed to be next.”

  “Anything else you can remember?” Dooley pressed. “Any detail, no matter how small?”

  Daniel leaned forward, his skin tacky with dried sweat. Closing his eyes, he walked through the entire fight again. The initial blow. His shoulder blades grinding into the floor. The perforated airholes of the mask—

  “His breath,” Daniel said.

  At this, Dooley and O’Malley went on point. “What about it?”

  “It was bitter and stale and minty.”

  “Like some kind of gum?”

  “No,” Daniel said, the recognition slotting into place. “It was dip. Tobacco. Like Copenhagen.”

  “The suspect dips tobacco,” O’Malley said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. You know how smell hits memory.”

  Cris was first to the logical next question: “Who in your group dips tobacco?”

  “I don’t know.” Daniel cracked his knuckles, one finger at a time. Realized he was doing it. Stopped. “They wouldn’t do it in group. We keep the rooms substance-free.”

  Theresa looked at O’Malley, said, “Have the parole officers pay visits tomorrow, check each suspect’s residence for chewing tobacco of any sort.”

  As the inspector withdrew, Daniel asked Dooley, “What have you heard from your guys in the field tonight? Aren’t they supposed to be watching the group members?”

  “Best they can,” Dooley said. “They can’t go into their apartments and stand over them in the bathtub.”

  “And?”

  “There was some lag between the restaurant, when we got word from you, and when we had our guys knock on doors. But Martin, Fang, and A-Dre were home when checked. Lil was out at the time—”

  “Lil was out?”

  “That’s unusual?”

  “Yes. Where was she?”

  “Some sort of church social.”

  He felt a blip of pride for her, even now.

  “And Xochitl was at a movie,” Dooley continued. “Our guy lost visual on her for a twenty-minute period, but obviously she’s not the one who threw you around the storage room. Of the men, Big Mac wasn’t where our guy thought. He’d left his apartment through a side door.”

  “You don’t have people on side entrances?” Cris asked.<
br />
  “We don’t have unlimited manpower.” Dooley kept her eyes on Daniel. “It seems implausible, but the others could have snuck out and back before their places were checked. Anton—sorry, A-Dre—is the only one we can rule out on geography alone. He lives down in the Bayview—no way he could’ve gotten back there, snuck into his apartment, and answered his door in that time frame.”

  Two alibis had been established then. Martin with his broken-down car during Vargas’s murder and A-Dre at his Bayview place during the Chinatown fight. Which, among the group members, left Big Mac and Fang as options for the man behind the mask. Big Mac, who’d been conveniently untraceable earlier this evening, and Fang, who according to Sue Posada had been acting erratically.

  “So A-Dre lives farthest,” Cristina said. “Who lives closest?”

  Daniel blew out a sigh. “Walter Fang. Right in Chinatown.”

  “Five blocks from the restaurant,” Dooley added.

  Daniel remembered stirring in his chair to find Fang standing there, right on top of him. The satchel briefcase at his feet, unsnapped. “But if your guys were watching him…”

  “You ever heard of tunnels connecting the basements of Chinatown?” Dooley asked. “They hid opium dens and torture chambers during the tong wars in the mid–nineteenth century? Escape routes during Prohibition?”

  “Of course,” Cristina said. “But I thought that was all stuff-of-legend nonsense.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But we found a length of tunnel connecting an alley to the cellar of that restaurant,” Dooley said. “Big hole behind the freezer.”

  A moment of speechlessness, during which Daniel recalled the earthy scent of the cellar. Having various routes in and out of that space would have proved useful to the attacker. He strained to connect the dots. “So you’re saying Fang…?”

  “I’m saying maybe he got out of his place and back into it before our patrolman could check and see that he’d gone missing. And maybe he knows some of these tunnels or whatever they are and can move around Chinatown unseen.”